Went to park with friend yesterday, who is a keen camper. Asked her about realities of camping with children. Before I could spit my sentence out, she interrupted with "Do you want a tent?".

She'd got a new fancy one, and couldn't move her old one on for love nor money. So she arrived later in the day with it in her boot and dumped it on me

So we have a tent! I think it's fairly standard, a 4-berth (bed? I don't know the fancy terms) one with one bedroom and a fronty-bed for all your nonsense. It doesn't have any instructions so I can see an imminent divorce when we come to try and erect it (erect, snarf).

What are your bare essentials for camping? She said not to buy cheap airbeds because they pop. We don't have a lot of money to be spending on Things, so we'll have to be fairly frugal about what we buy. I see Aldi have camping equipment this week, is that likely to be any good?

A simple list of what we would need for two adults, one with a bad back (him) and one who gets extremely cold very easily (me), a tiny baby and a boisterous 4-year-old.

Having been camping last weekend the one bit of advice I would give is: if you are sleeping on an air bed make sure you put a blanket on top of the air mattress and then the bed sheet as they get so cold at night as the air inside them cools. I slept much better on my second night having not done this on my first night. I also bought one of the Aldi 12v pumps today to blow the air bed up with on our next trip. Much more convenient and takes up.less room than a foot pump.

Happy camping. I'm sure someone on here will have a good list of essentials. I'm on my phone and this has taken ages to type out. Sorry.

Love being a mummy to the beautiful F (april 12) and especially love BLW.